


A Mirror of the Trackless Sky

by CherryIce



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Book(s), Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryIce/pseuds/CherryIce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are a reflection of Veidt's brave new world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mirror of the Trackless Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Essie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Essie/gifts).



Dan watches Laurie swim, water sluicing easily over her bare skin, tiled bottom racing below her. The lights are diffuse enough that the figure at the door casts no shadow, so she is the one who sees him first, a half-second of vision that accompanies the turn of her head and her breath. She treads water when she reaches the side of the pool where Dan sits, reaching up to fish a cigarette from her pack. Ignores Veidt as Dan lights it, one manicured hand tight on the tiles, exhales sharply so that tobacco and clove mingle with the chlorine already on the air. Veidt sit cross-legged beside him, barefoot and bare-chested, circlet gleaming. Casual.

"You are welcome here for as long as you desire," Veidt tells them. Laurie, hair slicked back with water, inhales shakily. The ember of her cigarette flares briefly, and she turns away.

Dan flicks the lighter absently, watches the flame gutter and quench. "And if we don't desire?"

"If you give me twelve hours notice, I can arrange for your transit." There is a faint line between his eyes. "Twenty-four, and I can have identities procured. I will not keep you against your will."

"I think I'd like you to leave now," Laurie says, turning back to face him. The look that passes between them is long, weighted, and finally, Veidt nods.

"The kitchen facilities are on the first level," he tells them, rising smoothly.

"Asshole," Laurie mutters before he is gone, vicious grin at the pause in his step. Grinds out her cigarette on the tiles and pushes back into the water, strokes sharp and violent.

Dan stares into the flame of the lighter, metal warm against his skin, and thinks of the sting of blowing snow, of Rorschach pressing forward along the interior of the Transanctarctic Mountains.

He wants to believe he's rooting for Rorschach to make it.

*

It is clear the day they leave, air still and two-months bright.

"Be careful out there," Veidt says as he bids them goodbye. Dressed in full regalia, he stands with arms crossed. One hand twitches as if to reach out, stills. "You know how to contact me."

On the plane, Laurie is silent, and Dan, withdrawn, watches as the burning white of Antarctica is swallowed by sky and sea.

Somewhere over the Pacific, Laurie breaks. Hurls her glass, ice long since melted, and it shatters against the wall, shards catching light like crystal as they fill the air.

"He cares," she says. Incredulous, offended, palms lined with a string of angry crescents from her red-painted nails, small droplets of blood coming up from cuts on her forehead and cheek. "I was there. I mean we, we were there, and..."

Dan closes his eyes. Feels the sting on his cheeks and hands from shattered glass.

"He cares," Laurie repeats. Soft over the hum of engines, the rush of air. "That's more than Jon ever did."

His face is wet, but he's not sure if he's bleeding or crying.

He doesn't know if there's a difference any more.

*

Last seen in New York, they are assumed to be among the dead.

"A turn of luck," Dan says. Runs Laurie's head under the tap again to make sure the last of the bleach is gone. It is coarser now, a water-dark copper. They are in the bathroom of a cheap motel in Mississippi, tile and shower curtain that shade of orange-brown particular to the sixties.

"We are, though," she says. Closes her eyes as water rinses over her face. He turns off the taps, bathroom drifting with steam, and hands Laurie a towel. He stood next to her as they watched the aftermath at Veidt's base. She was silent where he gasped, and he didn't know then what she'd seen. Patting her hair dry, she stands to stare distantly into the fogged-over mirror. "I mean - I'm not the same person any more. How could I be?"

*

The memorial is still makeshift, battered, crowded. In time, it will be replaced with plaque after plaque of names, neatly carved and sterile. Their names will be on there, separated by seven letters and several hundred thousand names. Now, though, there are pictures and flowers, newspaper clipping and dolls, names in marker and pen and spray paint.

'Walter Kovacs' he writes, for a friend long dead, 'Rorschach' for one he has yet to mourn. "I was never close to my father," he tells Laurie as he writes. Concentrates on the letters. "He wasn't a bad man, or a bad father. We just didn't connect." Steps back to look for an open space, drops his head as his throat closes up. "Hollis, he..."

"I know," she says, and takes the marker from his hand. Writes up 'Hollis Mason' neatly, and underneath that scrawls 'Edward Blake.' "He was my father," she tells Dan, finally, and beneath a wall black with names, she comes apart at his touch.

*

In Colorado, they rent a small house with a postage stamp lawn. Commuter suburb, virtually empty during the day, where people don't know their neighbours. They spend long mornings in bed. Fight over whose turn it is to do the dishes or cook. Laurie orders in, Dan constructs increasingly complex dishes. She runs every day, even in the snow that's coming on, comes back laughing with shoes soaked through and nose cold as ice. He brings home electronics from the dump and fails to fix more than half. There are days when the weight of it is too much, days when they can't even stand to look at each other.

In Texas, they are Colleen and Brett Tooms. They rent a house with a broad back porch, where they sit and drink iced tea from sweltering glasses. They meet a few of their neighbours, accept an offer to come over for supper. Susan and John serve collared greens, fried chicken. They drink mint kvass and for dessert there is apple babka from the new fusion bakery.

"Our daughter was in New York," Susan tells them, and Dan feels the bile rise in his throat. Laurie pushes her plate away.

"We're from there," he says, finally, laying his fork down with a clink that fills the room. "We were on vacation when it happened."

Susan reaches out to touch his hand. "The healing takes time," she says. There's something about this simple kindness that finally undoes him. Eyes watering, his shoulders start to heave, like he's trying to shake a weight he didn't realize he was carrying.

*

Laurie still talks to Veidt upon occasion. Late nights, early mornings, when she can't sleep or the dreams wake her. She curses him and he takes it, yells at him and he takes it. She doesn't ask for an apology, and as far as Dan knows, he's never offered one.

"I guess accepting the unforgivable runs in the family," she tells Dan bitterly. She and Veidt were friends for a long time, cohorts at abominable state suppers, token figures at important events.

Dan never really knew Veidt. A photo op here or there, the drug ring in Miami, crime syndicates in the northwest. They were familiar, but never friends. There's a what-if in there somewhere, but he's not arrogant enough to think he would have been able to see where everything was headed.

The newspapers talk about disarmament. There's unrest, there's discontent, there's hope. There's a future here, uncertain and tenuous, and all it cost them was the lives of ten million people.

*

The sun sets hazy in Los Angeles, ocean spray suspended in the air. There's salt on Dan's tongue and the sky is on fire.

"It's beautiful," Laurie says. She is sitting on the edge of the roof, legs dangling easily fifty-two blocks above traffic. Her hair is brown again; short, curly, pulled back severely. She wears leather despite the heat, shoulders bare in concession. The last refracted rays of the sun add a richness to her pale skin, a sheen of copper to her hair and gauntlets.

"It really is," he replies, watching the droplets of sweat beading at the nape of her neck. He thinks of smog coefficients, refractive indices, spectral shifts, the cast of her skin. She wears lipstick to patrol, blacks her eyes beneath her mask. He has lock picks, cuffs, defensive sprays, listening devices, remotes, wrenches, high explosives, and string.

They are a reflection of Veidt's brave new world, a study in self-conceit, bruised and valiant, resolute and wavering.

She grins, teeth bright and eyes shadowed. "Let's fight some crime." Hauls herself up before he can offer a hand, throws herself easily towards the next rooftop. He follows and lands hard, dull reverberation of impact shivering up his tibia and fibula, sharper through the radius and ulna. She runs, and he follows.

The sun is setting, and all he knows about the night to come is that it will end with the start of a new day.


End file.
